Feral Field Notes 002: Dragging My Feet and Dropping My Papers on Cockroach St.
Day 2 of 100: from Redlands to Los Angeles because I need my friends. Plus, a quote on paying attention and life and bombs that feels more relevant than ever.
This post is part of my Feral Field Notes series where I’m documenting my writing pilgrimage across the US (start here). And if you’re hungry to feel more awake in your life, begin your own 100 day journey in The Inner Pilgrimage.
Pilgrim Passport
Start
Redlands, CA
End
Los Angeles, CA (+ surprise visit to Santa Monica then back)
Distance Traveled
~93 miles
Daily Words of Wisdom
From Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg:
“We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded. This is how writers must think, this is how we must sit down with pen in hand. We were here; we are human beings; this is how we lived. Let it be known, the earth passed before us.”
Music Highlight
City of Angels by Fitz And The Tantrums (because how could I not?)
If you’d like to get updates for these (and other posts here on my newsletter Presence & Pilgrimage), make sure to subscribe below, and they should come right to your inbox. Or you can download the app and get notifications there.
Feral Field Notes
(Miss day 1? Start here.)
The second day of this journey ended in a pile of my “pilgrim passport” pages spilling out of my car and onto a filthy street in Los Angeles in the dark, where a giant cockroach scurried past just moments after I’d scrambled to collect them.
The morning had begun a bit more collected, thankfully.
I took it easy, having stayed up late the night before on top of a long day full of writing, crying, joy-ing, driving, hair-cutting, editing, worrying, and open-mic night…ing?
The friend whose place I was crashing at told me they often go on a morning walk, and I invited myself along even though I haven’t left a house before having had a coffee in so long, I wasn’t sure if I’d turn into a pumpkin or turn others into pumpkins. But what the hell, it’s day 2 of my writing pilgrimage, where I’m going to learn what shape it needs to take as I go, so a big break in routine felt right (and also bad, at first).
I love getting to see the world through others’ eyes (from stories to conversations to being shown around a place someone knows and loves). And this little neighborhood walk was no exception. After three and a half years of living in Redlands (before a year of nomadism and then returning), I thought I knew it pretty well. But even just a few neighborhoods over, and this walk felt pretty new to me.
My friend showed me some of their favorite spots and quirky details (Redlands is a quirky place), from a gnome-y side street that felt like a film set to a mini art exhibit in someone’s front yard with even more mini placards that had actual captions. They were so small that when I tried reading them, my eyes hurt and watered.
Anyway, despite the watery eyes, it felt delightful to pay attention in this way, to notice the details of a walk, a neighborhood, a life. This kind of thing always makes me think of the many ways Natalie Goldberg highlights the need for writers to pay attention:
“Use original detail in your writing. Life is so rich, if you can write down the real details of the way things were and are, you hardly need anything else.”
But I especially love the longer versions of this message, like this powerful excerpt (note: I am behind on these field notes and wrote this before the US bombed Iran, and I’m sorry to say it’s now more relevant than ever).
Our details are important. Otherwise, if they are not, we can drop a bomb and it doesn't matter. . . Recording the details of our lives is a stance against bombs with their mass ability to kill, against too much speed and efficiency. A writer must say yes to life, to all of life: the water glasses, the Kemp's half-and-half, the ketchup on the counter.
We must become writers who accept things as they are, come to love the details, and step forward with a yes on our lips so there can be no more noes in the world, noes that invalidate life and stop these details from continuing.”
Over the next few hours, I dragged my feet with some last-minute visits with friends I just want to glob onto, and I also got rid of a ton of stuff that didn’t pass the Joshua Tree pre-departure “shakedown” trip. I’m not (that) embarrassed to admit that one of the items that didn’t make it was a (very tiny) bookshelf. It felt important. But it was also stupid. And I needed to figure it out for myself (and I did).
After a third and final trip of hauling stuff up to store at my friend’s place and feeling the relief of the space created because of it (both internally and externally), I finally set off. Unlike the uncertainty of yesterday though, I knew exactly where I was headed today: to my best friend’s place of work in Santa Monica to surprise her with snacks and a hello as I passed through.
I’ll never forget the look on her face when I walked through the front door—her eyes were huge with surprise, and I can still hear the way she said, “SHUT. UP!” and the happy hug that followed.
A few hours later, and we were on the hunt for soup (because the weather demanded it), and wow did we find it. We just slurped and talked and slurped some more and felt happy together but also sad because so much of life right now is hard and heavy but also happy because we were finally together-together and with soup.
Back at our cars, where I knew I expected it to be goodbye-goodbye, she asked where I was headed and once again, my answer was a shrug or I don’t know for sure yet, maybe north-ish, which she didn’t care for. Because she’s got a lot going on—along with this being an unplanned visit—I hadn’t planned to stay at her place, but maybe I scared her with my shrugging (she’s a mom and probably pictured me getting kidnapped at the rest area I was vaguely considering driving to that night) and kept telling me I’d be welcome to stay.
After the obligatory Midwestern refusal-ing, I gave in/accepted with beaucoup enthusiasm. I was giddy AF because sleepovers never really stopped being fun but someone or something out there scammed us into thinking that was true, and we’ve been robbed of something really important…
Anyway, I was thrilled it all worked out this way because then I’d get to see her tomorrow, too. And if you can’t tell already—though I’ve wanted and needed this trip for a while—I was struggling with letting go of all the people I cared about, all my friends and the community I came to love for several years and then thought I had to leave forever yet found myself back in just a year later, yet also not as the same person I was when I’d left.
Now here I was leaving again.
As I was grabbing a few things from my car to take up to her place and not paying much attention in my excitement and rushing, that’s when my self-made pilgrim passport fell onto the street. The papers fell so dramatically because I hadn’t bound them back in as I’d been writing quotes on them so that I could have a kind of “guide” each day, some words of wisdom to provide some direction (just like I did in a Camino notebook).
It’s both spooky and funny, in a way, how quickly we forget things—how something that’s so important that you might have even pivoted your whole career because of it—can fade away by even the end of the day because of how easy it is to revert to autopilot or get caught up in the whirl of the world around us. And I just had to laugh as my eyes fell on this quote by author and musician Rick Rubin, especially because of how it was just that morning I’d thought of Natalie’s writing around paying attention, and now this:
“To live as an artist is a way of being in the world. A way of perceiving. A practice of paying attention.”
Ah, well. If there’s one thing I’ve accepted by now it’s that I’m never gonna learn anything once and remember and integrate it and apply it forever and ever, amen. I think it’s why Past Katie knew the value in those daily words of wisdom at the bottom of those pages—she knows we need frequent reminders and to keep beginning again and again as many times as we need to.
And to always pack hand sanitizer.
Photo Diary
With love from the road,
Katie
Continue to day 3 here.
Upcoming & Recurring
My next course, The Inner Pilgrimage: A 100 Day Journey, begins in September. I’d love to “walk” alongside you there.
My next Monthly Writers Chat for paid subscribers will be sometime in the fourth week of this month. Stay tuned for updates, and remember to connect with others in the Whatsapp Group and Writing Studio in the meantime.
Go inward on Tuesdays in my free meditation group from 8:30-9 am PST. Sessions will be paused starting in June.
Find everything else here.
Yep, I’d write on that paper.
Cockroach Meaning
Seeking clarity when all seems dark? Want to master the art of survival and shapeshifting? Cockroach, as a Spirit, Totem, and Power Animal, can help! Cockroach teaches you how to envision what's difficult to see and how to endure through challenging transitions. Delve deeply in Cockroach symbolism and meaning to find out how this Animal Spirit Guide can educate, illuminate, and transform you! Your visitor was on a mission of her own! 💕